---
title: "How to write a successful conference proposal"
tags: ["blog"]
date: 2025-02-11
byline: Donna Zhou
---

By the end of this blog, you'll know:

* how to write a conference proposal, and
* how to maximise your chance of getting selected to speak

Speaking at a conference is a goal you can achieve now. You don't have to wait until you've "made it" as a principal engineer.

I'm going to share with you what I've learned from speaking at the [GraphQL Conference](https://graphql.org/conf/2023/sessions/81daf0dd0b26efdc784ba0a530e54a68/) and how I maximised my chances of getting selected. I'm going to share the full text of my successful conference proposal so you can see how achievable this is. I will also share advice from [Benjie](https://github.com/benjie), a GraphQL Conference proposal reviewer and member of the Technical Steering Committee.

By this end of this blog, you will have the skills and confidence to write your own successful conference proposal.

## Why you should speak at a conference
Speaking at conferences is a great way to share knowledge and a fantastic opportunity to meet and learn from your peers. The GraphQL Conference is a fantastic way to connect with the community in person.

Although it is not the primary motivation, speaking at a conference helps you stand out as an engineer. It demonstrates that you are an expert on the topic.

## You are already enough
Many developers want to speak at a conference, yet I'm sure the next thought most people have is "but I'm not senior or good enough to do that!"

You don't need to wait until you are a big deal principal engineer to give a conference talk. At any stage of your career, you have valuable information to share. I'm sure you have already achieved something worth sharing in a conference talk.

In this blog I will explain how to take the experiences you already have, and present it as a winning conference proposal. **You are already enough!**

## Selecting conference talk ideas
You will maximise your chance of getting selected if you choose a topic **that more engineers are interested in**.

Before I became a software engineer, I was a stand-up comedian. When making jokes is your job, you need a systematic way to generate many ideas (jokes) and test them with audiences. You can use the same approach for selecting conference topic ideas.

### Generating talk ideas
Comedians have to generate new ideas (jokes) all the time. Demanding jobs such as Saturday Night Live require new scripts every week. It's part of the job, so quickly generating ideas is the first skill they teach you at comedy school.

Here's what I learned at The Second City (the comedy school where Tina Fey, Stephen Colbert, and Steve Carell studied). To generate heaps of ideas, get a blank piece of paper (or digital equivalent) and start writing down ideas **without judging them or editing them.** I suggest setting a short timer to timebox the activity, for example 10 minutes.

The most important point about this exercise is not pre-judging yourself. Humans are not good at multi-threading. If you're busy judging your ideas, you don't have enough brain power to be creative. Give yourself the permission to come up with crappy ideas. This is only an exercise and nobody is going to see what you write down.

You can also use prompts to help you think of talk ideas:
* What have I worked on in the last 12 months (or longer)?
* Where have I been spending my time over the past year?
* What are the technologies that I'm interested in?
* What have I been reading about?

After the timer is up and you have your ideas, then you can look through and start selecting your most promising ideas. Remember, only start judging after finishing writing down all the ideas.

### Testing talk ideas
It's useful to think about the conference proposal selection process from the perspective of a conference organiser. I interviewed Benjie, part of the team organising the GraphQL Conference and Technical Steering Committee, for his advice. He told me, the most important thing he looked for was **interesting topics and unique perspectives**. The most important factor in getting accepted to speak at a conference is having an idea that resonates.

So how do you know if your idea is interesting? An effective way to assess your talk ideas is to test them with colleagues. If your idea resonates with them, you've probably found an idea that many developers want to learn about.

Test your conference ideas where it's appropriate. Perhaps a team demo, brown bags, meetups, writing an internal blog, or simply talking to colleagues. What grabs their attention? Which conversation topics come up again and again?

### Narrowing down the list
To maximise your chances of getting selected, you should only submit your most promising talk ideas.

Try and rank your remaining conference talk ideas with these prompts (you'll see why in the next section):
* Which of these ideas resonated most with colleagues?
* Which of these ideas do I have the most expertise in?
* Which of these ideas am I most proud of, or most excited by?

I usually only have one or two proposals at a time, which I submit to many conferences. You might have more ideas, but try and keep your list short. Be efficient with your time and only submit the ideas you are sure about.

## Writing the proposal
Here are my top tips, including suggestions from Benjie.

After explaining these tips, in the next section I'll share the full text of my GraphQL Conference proposal, so you can see how achievable this is.

### Get straight to the point
A conference organiser needs to understand what your proposal is about within the first few seconds of reading your proposal. Get straight to the point about what you are going to share.

Conference organisers don't have time to call you and ask for clarification, so you must make sure what you write is very clear. Ask colleagues and friends to review your proposal for clarity.

### A proposal is like a movie trailer
You'll see below, a proposal is very short. You'll usually be given a small word limit.

You only have enough room to explain the main idea of your talk. You don't have enough room to explain all the points you will present in the talk. This is like a movie trailer. Show just enough excitement to grab a person's interest, but don't give the full story away. If they want to know all the details, they'll have to accept your talk first!

The proposal never contains slides nor speech content. You write slides and the speech after being accepted, so don't worry about having this ready beforehand.

### Explain why you're the best person to give the talk
Demonstrate your credentials and why you're the best person to give this talk. Explain why you are knowledgeable about the topic.

Benjie said he was looking for **unique perspectives**. Demonstrate why you're uniquely qualified to deliver this talk.

A conference organiser might not know who you are. Explaining your credentials is essential so the organiser trusts you to deliver on your talk proposal.

### Emphasis community connections (optional)
If you have participated in the community, write about how you've contributed to the community. Similar to the previous point, a conference organiser doesn't know anything about most applicants. If the organisers have seen or interacted with you already, they will have more trust in you.

I've been involved in the GraphQL community as a maintainer of GraphQL Java and contributed to the specification. The conference organisers trusted me to deliver the talk because they could see I was already contributing to the community.

### Save your work
Save your proposal, so you can recycle the proposal for other conferences. It also means you're protected in case a website loses your work.

## My GraphQL Conference proposal in full
This was the conference proposal that got accepted for the GraphQL Conference in 2023. See how I used the tips above in the additional notes below.

> **Title:** How to make your first open source contribution (1)
> 
> **Description:**
> Have you always wanted to make an open source contribution, but not sure where to start? (2)
> 
> Getting started with open source is much easier than it seems.
> 
> A year ago, I started regularly contributing to GraphQL Java and the GraphQL Scalars project. I caught the open source bug and made it a habit, and now I'm a maintainer of GraphQL Java (3). It has been an incredible learning experience, and it has been very rewarding to meet the engineers using the library all over the world.
> 
> But it wasn't always an open source fairytale! Many years ago I tried to contribute to another project, and it was a total failure. I didn't have a great experience and it put me off open source for a long time. In this talk, I want to explain what I did differently to succeed this time around (4).
> 
> **Speaker bio:**
> I am a maintainer of GraphQL Java and software engineer at Atlassian (5). I've published a book, GraphQL with Java and Spring, all about the official Spring for GraphQL integration and the GraphQL Java library.

Notice my proposal was very short, but it was also very clear. A tip: when you ask colleagues to review your proposal, don't ask them "was it clear?" because they'll probably say "yes" to be polite. If you want more accurate feedback, instead ask them to explain the proposal back to you.

Additional commentary on my proposal
1. Straight to the point in the title: My talk is going to be about how a beginner can make their first open source contribution. I would avoid puns, jokes, and pop culture references in the title because they might not make sense to a reviewer and can detract from your message.
2. Why this talk is interesting: this is a common question many engineers have.
3. Emphasise your credentials to build trust, and emphasise community connections.
4. Why this talk is interesting: I didn't always succeed. I initially failed miserably, but made changes and then became a maintainer. Note that I don't actually explain any steps for how to make an open source contribution in this short proposal. I deliberately stopped short of explaining so you'll only find out if you accept my conference talk! Remember, this is like a movie trailer. Show just enough excitement to grab a person's interest, but don't give the story away.
5. Explaining my credentials, why I'm uniquely qualified to give this talk. I also mentioned where I work and the book so it's easier to verify my credentials.

## Dealing with rejection
Rejection sucks, particularly after putting in so much effort to write a proposal. Even great talk proposals can still be rejected. Perhaps the conference organisers were looking for different topics, or there was some other factor you can't control.

This is why I want to prepare you upfront, you will be applying to many conferences. If you keep trying, you will eventually get accepted. You can reuse most of your talk proposal for other conferences, so your effort is not wasted. You should only spend a few minutes on each subsequent application.

If it helps, I tried to reframe my disappointment of getting rejected. Instead, I tried to make a game out of collecting rejections. My goal was to collect 100 conference rejections, because I knew every submission was improving my chances. Although I was rejected from quite a few conferences, I didn't achieve my "goal" of 100 rejections.

When a rejection happens, it's worth remembering your reasons for wanting to speak at a conference, which I wrote about at the top of this page. I promise the payoff is worth the uncomfortable feeling of getting rejected. Don't give up.

While I encourage you to continue trying, each rejection also gives you the opportunity to assess if there is anything you can do better next time. In my experience, conference organisers are usually too busy to deliver detailed feedback. You could instead ask a colleague or friend for help. Try to ask colleagues who have already spoken at conferences, as they've already achieved what you're aiming for.

## Apply for GraphQLConf 2025
In this page we walked through every thing you need to know for writing a successful conference proposal.

You already have what it takes. I encourage you to apply to speak at GraphQLConf 2025! The call for proposals is open, [apply now!](https://sessionize.com/graphqlconf-2025).
